The goal of this research is to increase the signal-to-noise ratio and thereby to enhance the clinical usefulness of fetal electrocardiograms (FEKG) recorded in a non-invasive manner from abdominal electrodes. Our approach utilizes adaptive noise cancelling algorithms to obtain the clearest possible FEKG wave forms as early as possible during pregnancy. This involves cancellingof the maternal electrocardiogram (MEKG), abdominal muscle noise, and 60 Hz interference. For the coming year, we propose to record a high quality data base from approximately 25 subjects at varying stages of pregnancy, and to refine and test the adaptive filtering algorithms on this data set. We propose to develop standardized procedures for simultaneously recording chest-lead and abdominal-lead data and to use this data to optimize the placement of abdominal and chest leads in recording. We will attempt development of multi-abdominal-lead spatial summation algorithms and test with synthetic and real data. The purpose of this technique is to obtain clear beat-by-beat FEKG's by reducing muscle noise.